Posts Tagged ‘shopping’

Ever since having kids, I’ve been a fan of Old Navy. They have good children’s clothes at affordable prices — a big help when you have three active kids who are continuously outgrowing and wearing out their clothes. But that’s not the only reason I shop at Old Navy, especially this time of year.

Recently, we were on holiday and found ourselves in need of some new pants (sans holes) for Ezra, my youngest, as well as a couple other small items. The only viable option we had available was Wal-Mart. Normally, I don’t shop at the retail giant because I have some serious issues with the way they run their business, but sometimes, evil becomes a necessary evil.

You come to an intersection — a red light means stop and a green light means go. Yellow, well, there are different schools of thought, but the other two are always the same. Around here, we have three “trash” bins — one for actual garbage, one for recyclables, and one for compostables. They’re always black, blue, and green, respectively. There’s never any doubt — food scraps go in the green bin, bottles and cans in the blue one. Doesn’t matter whose house you’re at, you know where to scrape your plate. Unfortunately, not every industry is so considerate.

Many years ago, before I had kids of my own, I used to take my niece, then about 6 or 7 years old, Christmas shopping. I gave her a modest budget and let her pick out gifts for her brother, her parents and grandparents, and my wife. We’d get half a dozen presents and spend about twenty dollars or so. Fast forward about ten years and she’s quite capable of doing her own holiday shopping.

I remember, from my childhood, going out into the woods with my parents, finding the perfect tree, and cutting it down to bring home. We did that once. That was far too rough and rugged for my parents — their idea of roughing it was Opera in the Park. So they bought a plastic tree with little plastic bunches of green pine needles that kept falling off the brown plastic branches and we never had a real tree again.